Комбат. Игра без правил. Андрей Воронин

      “Memory?” She felt a familiar story coming on. As much as she’d bristled over hearing stories when she was younger, she’d come to welcome them now. They were a comfort to her and a way of bonding with her father.

      “Your mother was just like you,” he recalled fondly. “Always bent on doing her own thing. Always had to find her own way to the right conclusion.”

      This was nothing she hadn’t heard before. As was the note of bittersweet sorrow in her father’s voice. For a second she was tempted to put her arms around him and hug tightly. But there was still a small portion of her that resisted.

      “You miss her a lot, don’t you?”

      He sighed and nodded. “More than words can say, Rayne. More than words can say. I miss them both a lot.” He looked down at the tombstone. “The difference being is that I know Mike’s gone.”

      She shut her eyes, knowing what was coming. It was a path she walked herself more times than she cared to think, but to hold on to irrational hope wasn’t healthy. He was the only parent she had left and as much as she declared herself to be full grown and independent, she didn’t want to lose him.

      “Dad—”

      He laughed softly to himself. “You’re going to tell me not to start again. But I’m not. I’m just maintaining the same steady course I always have over all these years.” He looked at her, debating. Then he made his decision. She needed something to make her a believer again. And maybe he needed someone else to believe besides himself. “I haven’t told the others, but I found your mother’s wallet.”

      She stared at him, dumbfounded. “What? When?”

      He fell into police mode, giving her the highlights. “A little more than a month ago. Just before Thanksgiving. Homeless man had it in his shopping cart. He was dead, so he couldn’t be questioned. I don’t know where he found it and the lab couldn’t get any readable prints off it, but it was your mother’s.” He saw the doubt returning to Rayne’s eyes. “It had her license and pictures of all of you in it. She had that in her purse on the day she left the house.

      “I went to see that homeless man in the morgue. He didn’t look like any deep-sea diver to me, which meant that he found the wallet on dry land.”

      “Which means what?” Rayne asked. “That she was mugged? That her purse washed up on shore?” She took hold of her father’s shoulders, desperately wanting to get through to him. This was killing both of them by inches. “Dad, just because you found her wallet doesn’t mean that you’re going to find her, or that she’s even—”

      He cut her off sharply. “It means exactly that, Rayne. She is alive and we’re going to find her. It’s as simple as that.”

      He made her want to scream. “Dad, you have to move on with your life.”

      “I have moved on.” He struggled not to raise his voice. He’d moved on from one day to the next, accumulating fifteen years. Getting things done. “I’m not sitting in any closet, or staring out the window for days on end. I’ve raised five kids, had a hand in raising a couple more and even now make sure that everyone’s fed, warm and thriving to the best of my ability.”

      He looked down into her eyes, fighting to keep his voice from cracking. “But don’t ask me to stop believing that someday I’m going to see her, see your mother walking toward me. Because the day I stop believing in that is the day I stop breathing. She was my life, Rayne, my every breath. My mistake was in not letting her know that.”

      A smile played along her lips. “You don’t make mistakes, remember?” And then, breaking down, Rayne embraced him. “God, Dad, I hope that someday someone loves me just half as much as you love Mom.”

      For a moment he held her to him, just as he had when she was small. A lot of time had gone between then and now. “They will, Rayne, they will. Or I’ll personally fillet them.”

      He was rewarded with her laugh. Andrew stepped back, glancing over his shoulder. He saw three men walking in their direction.

      “Okay, dry those tears, here come your brothers and Patrick.”

      Straightening, she wiped away the telltale signs of rebellious tears before turning around to face the approaching threesome.

      She tossed her head, her hair bobbing about her face like golden springs. “You’re late,” she declared with no small amount of glee.

      It earned her a shove from Clay.

      “There’ll be no fighting at the grave site,” Andrew informed them.

      “Yes, Dad,” Clay and Rayne dutifully chorused before they grinned at one another.

      Chapter 3

      It was a room that reeked of desperation and despair. Furnished only with two chairs squared off on either side of a scarred metal rectangular table, its gray walls—the hue of an old buffalo nickel—provided the only color within the small area. There were no windows, only a single door. A door with a guard standing on the other side.

      Cole watched as his younger brother was brought in. Clad in a faded orange jumpsuit, Eric rubbed his wrists the moment the required handcuffs were removed.

      He looked bad, Cole thought. A mere shadow of the laughing, carefree boy he’d once known.

      Anger welled within his chest. Anger at his parents who should have stopped this years before it happened. Anger at Eric for choosing the path of least resistance, for squandering his life and allowing himself to be devaluated this way.

      Cole had pulled strings to see his brother inside this room. Ordinarily the room was used only by lawyers for consultations with their jailed clients. Anyone else was required to meet with prisoners in a communal area with a soundproof length of glass separating them and words echoing through a phone line.

      He knew Eric. Eric had trouble dealing with restrictions. The very thought of bars around him fed his claustrophobia.

      It surprised him to see how old Eric looked. He’d left a boy behind. The person standing uncertainly before him was a hollowed out man.

      They’d always been worlds apart, he and Eric. He’d been born old. Eric, he’d thought, was destined to be eternally young. His brother was more childish than childlike, but it had had its appeal, especially among the kinds of women Eric gravitated toward.

      For Kathy Fallon, the appeal had apparently worn thin. Cole knew without being told that Kathy’s leaving had been difficult for Eric to accept. His brother was accustomed to people liking him, seeking him out for a good time. Eric always had an endless supply of money and loved parties.

      There was no party for Eric here.

      There might not be one for a very long time if all the wheels he was trying to put into motion ground to a halt, Cole thought.

      The expression on Eric’s face was equal parts surprise and relief when he looked at him.

      Cole pulled his own chair out and nodded toward the other chair, indicating that Eric do the same. The metal legs scraped along the floor. Eric fell limply into his chair. His eyes looked eager as they fastened themselves to Cole’s face.

      “You came.”

      “You’re my brother,” Cole replied simply, hiding the fact that a wealth of emotions, too many to count, were tangling up inside of him.

      It had been that way ever since Eric’s lawyer had called to tell him that Eric had been arrested and was asking for him. He’d booked the next flight out of New York and spent most of the time on the phone, planning, gathering what information he could. By the time he’d landed late last night, Cole had had as much of a handle on things as he could.

      Long ago, he’d learned to rely first and foremost on himself.

      Eric’s knuckles were almost white as he clenched his hands into